


Stars In His Eyes

by Rafira



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Gen, Immortal, Immortal!Cloud, Multiple Timelines, Multiple Universes, Time Travel, god!cloud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:53:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24506464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rafira/pseuds/Rafira
Summary: Cloud has been doing this for so long that he’s really not sure what he’s doing anymore.He remembers the first timeline. Stopping meteor, defeating Sephiroth, and then slowly rebuilding the world with his friends. He remembers watching them age as he stayed the same. He remembers Yuffie’s wedding, bouncing Denzel’s children on his knee, Cid’s rough battle with lung cancer, and Tifa softly passing away just weeks shy of turning 100. One by one, his human friends grew old and finished their time on earth. He remembers Vincent, eventually letting go of his body and passing into the lifestream. Then all that was left of AVALANCHE was himself and Nanaki, who lived for nearly 2,000 years. Cloud outlived him too, not looking a day over 25. They had many, many discussions over what this meant, but there was no answer. The Planet, too ignored his call on this issue for the first lifetime.Cloud's friends all grew old and died, and he remained. The world ended, and he lived. Now he wanders through time and space, realities, watching the world be born and die again. Sometimes things change, sometimes they stay the same. He is the eternal wanderer.General fic, no real plot.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 136





	Stars In His Eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Castastrophe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Castastrophe/gifts).



Cloud has been doing this for so long that he’s really not sure what he’s doing anymore.

He remembers the first timeline. Stopping meteor, defeating Sephiroth, and then slowly rebuilding the world with his friends. He remembers watching them age as he stayed the same. He remembers Yuffie’s wedding, bouncing Denzel’s children on his knee, Cid’s rough battle with lung cancer, and Tifa softly passing away just weeks shy of turning 100. One by one, his human friends grew old and finished their time on earth. He remembers Vincent, eventually letting go of his body and passing into the lifestream. Then all that was left of AVALANCHE was himself and Nanaki, who lived for nearly 2,000 years. Cloud outlived him too, not looking a day over 25. They had many, many discussions over what this meant, but there was no answer. The Planet, too ignored his call on this issue for the first lifetime.

He drifted the planet, guiding, teaching, helping. He lived far longer than anyone should live, but he had long embraced calm and peace on the inside.

Eventually, all things end, and the sun went supernova. He turned his face towards the warmth of the star as the planet shattered below him, finally ready to embrace death, but felt only tingling. He cast.

He slid out of the reality and found himself back in Cosmo Canyon, two billion years ago, watching himself have tea with Nanaki. He could recall snippets of the conversation with his old friend, but was barely listening as he looked around. The town looked nearly the same as what he remembered, except some buildings and walkways seemed to be in different places from where he remembered. He looked down at his hands. What had happened? He had… he had cast a spell. Cloud had long since stopped needing materia, instead drawing on his own memories of magic like the Cetra did long ago. But at the end of the world, he had cast a spell without even thinking about it.

He concentrated, and tried that magic again. He drew it through his body, in an action that felt as natural as breathing. The mako that had flown through him for all these millennia had mixed with his spirit long ago, and he pulled on this, stepping forward and … into a forest he had never seen before. The sounds of laughter filled his ears, and he looked through a bush to see a group of people dancing together in joy. The clothing reminded him of Cetra garb. He pulled on the magic and stepped again, finding himself in a form of Midgar he had never been in, with the disc entirely unfinished above him. He stepped around construction workers, marvelling at the view.

It took Cloud many, many years fighting with the weight of this magic, and what it meant. He learned to control his destination easily, as the magic felt natural and intuitive to him. He could see it all laid out in his head the way he would never be able to understand it when he was 21, and he used this.

He spent lifetimes jumping through time, going to key events in the timeline to change things. Win battles he previously lost, change the story. He could go to these realities and replace Cloud, guide him, or work in the shadows. He searched hard for the ‘true’ reality, where he got everything correct. He saved Aerith countless times. But Cloud wasn’t sure why he was doing this. In the end, no matter who lived or died, everything ended the natural way in the end. Was there a ‘true’ way things were meant to go?

He even let Jenova win a few times, but still he found himself alive even after Meteor smashed the planet to bits.

After ever-changing realities and exploring every option he possibly could, Cloud realised that each of these times was unique and special in their own way.

Clouds who he had never been existed in these worlds, and they interacted with Zacks and Tifas and Sephiroths who could be so familiar or so so foreign to what he knew once. But in this world, they were the ‘truth’. The visited realities with completely different ingrained social structures, where that version of ‘him’ and his friends fell in love with different people, or were enemies, or differed in some other fantastic way.

It was liberating to realise that he didn’t actually have to do anything.

So Cloud stopped fighting, and started wandering, He dropped his sword somewhere in the void of spacetime, knowing that if he really needed it he could call on it but at this point he could defeat even Sephiroth in a second, simply by not virtue of ascending to a higher plane where his physical body was nothing more than a vessel, and sometimes he chose to go without.

He spent countless years jumping through realities, observing. He watched Zack grow up, a dirty and loud kid, in the rainforest of Gonaga. He watched Yuffie rule as empress of a proud Wutai, still fierce but not steeled from battle with Sephiroth and Jenova. He watched Tifa play grand piano for Cid and Shera’s wedding. He watched Zack and Aerith's children grow up in a peaceful world. He saw Vincent bleed out on the floor of the lab, Hojo not interested in inflicting pain on him.

He changed things sometimes.

He spent a full year bullying Hojo. Tripping him down the stairs, snapping his spine, trapping him in a mako tube, throwing him out of the skyscraper window… it felt cathartic, even after killing him once. But Cloud never stooped to torture, never having a taste for such a thing.

He went back in time, all the way to when Jenova first made contact with Gaia, and killed her then. She fought differently, stronger and more alive. But she was nothing to her strength, and the Cetra watching him were absolutely dumbstruck by this man who was so intrinsically one with the planet but was not one of them. He shied away from their attentions, but retuned later to learn all he could about their culture and leave in the peaceful society. He spent a long time in that time, interested to see how the world progressed as humanity co-existing peacefully with the Cetra. ShinRa was truly not able to get a foothold in that timeline.

In another time, Cloud killed Hojo and let Vincent and Lucretia run away with Sephiroth large in her womb, and then destroyed all of ShinRa for good measure. He gave Sephiroth that happy childhood, and many, many others more just to watch the man grow up loved and well-adjusted.

He watched himself fail and die time and time again to stop Sephiroth in different timelines and in different ways, and as the planet split apart under the massive weight of Meteor he marvelled that they had won in the first instance when there were so many close calls.

He remembers all of it. He stops thinking of the difference between ‘this Barret’ and ‘his Barret’. He stops wondering at the differences between brown-eyed and red-eyed Tifa, or Zack’s changing last name. He notes the existence and absence of Genesis and Angeal, and watches as his 16 year old self manages to haul Sephiroth over the walkway in the Nibelheim Reactor, whilst other times Sephiroth jumps.

He sees every combination of events in every realities, and lives on in different timelines until everyone dies, or until he gets bored. Sometimes he just pops in to see certain events, passing over time like a skipping stone, to watch Reeve unveil his latest project or to babysit Marlene for Barret. He takes lovers occasionally, in people he knows (and how many people can say they’ve fucked everyone they know?) and in strangers, which is delightful when he realises that all of these people he thought of as inconsequential have their own entire lives, and hopes and dreams, and influence the world in their own way. It keeps him grounded in the times he thinks he might just stop existing.

He learned everything he could possibly learn, including a gruelling year learning to cook Nibel food under the tutelage of his mum, who cried tears of happiness and hugged him tight when she finally tasted his perfect Kartoffelkloesse and Schweinshaxe. He dulls his senses enough to master every martial art, taking breaks in between to watch every TV show made, ever.

he lets himself be caught sometimes, for what he truly is, although it is barely comprehensible to others. Aerith is a culprit more often than the others, feeling in him that familiar call of the planet that she had only heard before in her mother. It overwhelmed her when she was too young, sending the girl to her knees in sobs on the church floor. But that might have been because Cloud was floating a full foot off the floor, idly communing with the planet. He was more careful with her after that. Watching her grow older, past the time he originally re-joined the planet, was one of his pleasures. 

He looked in the mirror once mid self-haircut and saw the galaxy reflected back in his eyes, twinkling stars on the mako blue canvas and milky white pupils. He blinked it away, not wanting a reminder of his truly inhuman nature, and slid sideways in spacetime to a trendy salon in the year [ ν ] εγλ 0140 for a tutting hairdresser to finish the choppy job he had done on his hair.

 _What am I?_ he asked Gaia. 

This version of the planet was a little bit older, wiser, and much healthier with the reactors long gone. It answered back in his mind, all chiming bells and wind through the trees.

 _Weapon_ , but even that sounded unsure.

Cloud thought out his hesitation at this answer, and it tried again later in a younger time, voice more like biting into a crisp green apple.

_Hero?_

He shrugged mentally at the childish answer, both knowing the question was not an easy one, and continued to bandage the injured Wutaian soldier in the summer of [ μ ]εγλ 1993.

The planet offered him _Savior_ to him later, while he tilled the land in a field. This land may or may not be where Midgar stands in another five thousand years, but right now instead of a dead dustbowl it is a lush and alive plain. He watches the elegant necks and velvety horns of wild grazing animals in the far distance, and remembers he has not hugged a chocobo in too long.

He thought back on the countless times Gaia had been destroyed, the billions who died every time, those he didn’t care to save, letting the world die just to see what happened. The smell of burning flesh, the feeling of souls returning to the lifestream. Not a hero, not a saviour. Maybe a long time ago. Gaia wrinkled at the memories he let her see inside his head.

He heads to the Gold Saucer after that, but there are only so many lifetimes he can spend racing and breeding chocobos, and he gets the high score on every arcade game from a few different realities. VR is so advanced that you might as well be snowboarding for real then simulating it, so he hits the slopes for ten winters in a row, pulling himself on that thread of reality every time the snow melts.

 _Wanderer,_ the planet suggested later but earlier again. It was a different Gaia, different-but-same as everything was. It wasn’t an answer, but it wasn’t wrong, and he wasn’t sure there _was_ a right answer at this point. He had given up on finding a meaning a long time ago, and simply continued existence.

No matter where he went, no version of Gaia knew what he was, or why he existed for millennia, fluidly sliding through realities, seeing happy endings and fiery deaths in an endless existence. He did not seem to be powered by the planet, he was his own little self-sustaining and immortal battery.

He has sunk down to the core of the planet, slumbered for millennia, to wake up fresh-faced and energetic. He even took a nap in the crook of Ultima Weapon’s shoulder, listening to the slow pulse of the WEAPON.

Even in sleep he can feel the ebb and flow of the lifestream as the time pass and billions are born, love, experience pain, and discovery, and die. Trees fall and rot, cities are built and then destroyed. It is comforting to feel the life above, and he stretches in the warmth of a billion beating hearts. 

Cloud walked on the scorched earth of a battle for something meaningless long after his friends had passed away. The corpses hadn’t been collected by either side yet, and monsters picked at an exposed torso. The advanced artillery lay abandoned, and hissed with a release of gas as he stepped on it.

Cloud sighed. He needed a beer.

He sidestepped smoothly through timespace to the version of reality where his favourite beer was made. It was available only in a particular set of instances where a pretty bartender who didn’t die when Gonaga’s reactor didn’t explode mentioned a cocktail she had experience in Costa Del Sol to a disillusioned businessman, who had only been in the right place at the right time due to missing his bus, and he set up his own brewery to re-create the typical ‘beachy’ taste as explained by the waitress, but failed his first batch, only stumbling onto Cloud’s favourite taste by accident in a limited run only available from the bottle store at Fort Condor in the autumn of [ ν ] - εγλ 0011.

He had purchased and drank this particular six-pack over a thousand times.

He stepped straight from the door of the bottleshop to the rooftop of the ShinRa infantry, ten years in the past and as close to his original timeline as he could be bothered at this time of night.

He used to come here as a cadet, to be alone.

He drunk the first beer slowly, watching the twinkling lights of the city. So many people out there, so small and insignificant when he had watched them live and die countless times.

He trailed a finger down the glass of the bottle, feeling the kiss of frost cool down the brew. There was nothing more Nibelheim than an ice cold drink, even in winter. He looked up at the dark clouds, knowing there was a swirling galaxy above, further than anyone could ever know _. Should I go to space?_ He wondered. The planet seemed displeased with the idea of him leaving her.

The metal fire door swung open on creaking hinges, interrupting his silence. He felt Zack Fair’s presence. Without even looking at him, he could see the other man’s expression from knowing Zack for such a long time. Smiling, always smiling. He let Zack talk first.

“Hey! I thought I might find you up here,”. Zack was always so kind to his little cadet buddy. Cloud’s heart went out to the man, so full of kindness.

“Did you come here to find me, Zack?” Cloud replied. He might have seen the other man an hour or a hundred years ago, but it was always a pleasure to talk to the man.

“Would you believe me if I was just stealing a breath of fresh air?” Cloud could believe that.

As Zack came to sit next to him, he didn’t purposefully turn his face away to hide his eyes, but instead carefully altered reality enough that Zack wouldn’t look twice at him and realise immediately this wasn’t the Cloud he knew, although he could never truly comprehend the full extent of who this Cloud is.

He offered the other man an ice cold beer, and Zack took it with glee. “Hey! When did you sneak out and get these?”

Cloud smiled easily, eyes still out at the blinking Reactor No.1. “I can’t tell you all my secrets, Zack”.

They sat in silence for a pleasant while, before Cloud surprised himself by breaking it.

“Can I ask you a question, Zack?”

“Sure,” Zack answered, but Cloud could easily hear in his voice the underlying question. _Are you ok? Is this serious? Who do I need to beat up?_

“Do you ever wonder what you’re doing here?”

Zack tensed, then relaxed. He finished his drink. Cloud cracked a new one for both of them, handing the other man the bottle.

Zack took a swig. Then he sighed. “Are you.. are you ok, Cloud?”

“Believe it or not, I’m ok.” Cloud smiled enigmatically. “I’ve just been … thinking about what the meaning of it all is. And I’m a bit stuck.”

“Hmm.” Zack made an exaggerated thinking motion. Cloud wished for a moment that it was a Zack Fair that had known him as an older man, and had taken him a bit more seriously and without the kiddie gloves. He wasn’t so fragile. But he also appreciated that it represented the care Zack had for him, and he was one of the first to actually care about Cloud.

“I guess… you just have to keep going forward, right?” He answered, after a while. “You just keep going.”

“Hmmm.” Cloud hummed. Another non-answer. He bumped Zack’s shoulder, in silent acknowledgement of the other man’s concern.

He is grateful that no matter what, Zack Fair will be Zack Fair and everything that means and will mean.

Zack changed the subject, and they engaged in easy small-talk for a while, until the rooftop was again punctuated by a squeaking door. Cloud Strife’s shock of blonde hair and wide blue eyes stared back at them.

“Zack? What are you doing up here?” He asked, in a hesitant voice. “Ah… did you want me to leave you and your friend alone?”

Zack turned to the newcomer, then back at Cloud, and then back again. Cloud swore he could see steam rising from his ears as he tried to process this.

Cloud mentally files this splinter of timeline away under ‘Accidentally meet young-cloud 62’, and smirks. Maybe this existence isn’t too bad.

**Author's Note:**

> this is entirely un-proofread and un-betaed. I just kind of felt like writing it. hope you enjoy.  
> I'm just gonna retrospectively dedicate this fic to Candi, one of my oldest fandom friends. I cherish you.


End file.
